Inspired by yesterday’s great news about Meb Keflezighi becoming the first American to win the Boston Marathon since 1983?

Wish that winner had been you?

You’re just in time to join the Big Team in the Big City.

That’s us, Team Catholic Charities NY in the upcoming TCS New York City Marathon.

Catholic Charities is one of the official charity participants for the 2014 TCS New York City Marathon.

And as you likely already know, there are only a few ways to get into this exclusive event.

Elite runners qualify based on running time. Lucky ones – just 6 percent – get selected through a lottery. Members of New York Road Runners (NYRR) qualify by running 9 races and volunteering for one.

And remarkable people like you qualify by running for charity.

During the next 6 months, ten runners on Team Catholic Charities New York will dedicate themselves to two challenges: training to run 26.2 miles through every borough of New York City, and fundraising for The St. Nicholas Project, our Catholic Charities initiative that provides nearly 4,000 New Yorkers in need with warm clothing, blankets and more during the cold winter months.

Visit this blog regularly for updates on our team, information about how you can get involved as a Team Catholic Charities NY volunteer, and how you can run in one of New York City’s most exciting athletic events.

Know someone who’s eager to run the TCS NYC Marathon?
Share this post with them and tell them about this special opportunity.

The numbers are shocking, writes Catholic New York in this recent editorial:

In just five years, the number of New York City residents who depend on food pantries and soup kitchens has shot up to 1.4 million. That’s 200,000 more than in 2008 and it accounts for one-fifth of the city’s residents

And contrary to popular perception, the vast majority of those battling hunger are not the homeless.

The appalling statistics: 1 in 5 city children live in food scarce homes; 1 in 6 city adults live in food scarce homes; 11.5 percent of people over 60 don’t have enough food, an increase of 33 percent since 2008; 64 percent of people relying on the city’s food pantries and soup kitchens are women; 95,000 food recipients are veterans.

The hunger crisis, and it is indeed a crisis, was spotlighted in lengthy and detailed coverage this week in the New York Daily News, which also pointed out the strains placed on the charitable agencies, many of them Catholic groups, who run the city’s network of some 1,000 food pantries and soup kitchens.

Catholic New York

Msgr. Kevin Sullivan, executive director of the Archdiocesan Catholic Charities, told the paper that people are turning to us for emergency help because it’s so hard for them to find jobs, or decent-paying jobs. Many, he added, don’t have enough to pay rent and to eat.

To lend an immediate hand and get personal insight he can share with legislators, Msgr. Sullivan is making the rounds, rolling up his sleeves and helping out at local food pantries affiliated with Catholic Charities. Last week he volunteered at St. Jerome’s pantry in the Bronx.

Bullied for much of his childhood and bounced between eight inner-city schools Edwyn Colon, 11, was treated for anxiety and panic attacks.

The young boy shares a one-bedroom apartment with his mother who is disabled by asthma, neuropathy and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease and his grandfather who needs constant care due to the three strokes he suffered and Parkinson’s Disease. His father left the family when Edwyn was four years old.

Edwyn needed someone outside his family, his mother said, someone healthy who he could look up to, learn from and begin to enjoy life outside their urban Bronx neighborhood.

Fortunately, the family found Catholic Big Sisters and Big Brothers, an affiliate of Catholic Charities New York. The agency matched volunteer and investment banker Noah Anderson, 33, a “big brother”/mentor for Edwyn.

“I don’t believe anyone is self made; you are the people you interact with,” says Mr. Anderson. “I was fortunate to interact with good people and I want Edwyn to have that experience.”

From typhoons to hurricanes and pestilence to plagues, the Catholic Church maintains its centuries-established commitment of providing food, shelter and support for those suffering. Now, as tens of thousands of Filipinos whose lives have been destroyed by the devastating typhoon struggle to survive without food, water or homes, Catholic Relief Services is on the ground, providing help. Meanwhile, closer to home, New Yorkers continue to rebuild lives hurt by Hurricane Sandy.

Newsday tells the story of Susan Gorman, 58, a widow who lost her home to 5 1/2 feet of Sandy-driven flood waters, and Catholic Charities’ continued efforts to help her and other hurricane survivors recover.

Ms. Gorman’s now-empty split-level house in Lindenhurst, Long Island stood across the street from a canal. She applied to the state’s NY Rising Housing Recovery Program — seeking to have the state buy her house — with the help of Isabel Clostre, a disaster case manager for Catholic Charities. Clostre stood next to Gorman outside the gray-shingled house.

“I left a year ago today,” Gorman told Newsday, recalling her evacuation to her mother’s home in Bellmore the day before the storm hit Long Island. “I thought I would be back in three days, and I’ve never come back and will probably never come back.

“This is the home I’ve lived in for 33 years,” she said. “My children were raised here. But I’ve had water in the house since the storm several times. The streets still flood. For me, I can’t come back here . . . I just can’t do it. My husband died a year before the storm. For me to go through this alone, it’s just not easy.”

Catholic Charities, at a recent joint news conference with fellow representatives of the Long Term Recovery Group, a coalition of 145 nonprofit, volunteer and governmental organizations providing disaster relief services to Sandy victims, made it clear their efforts are continuing.

From the Philippines to New York, families confronted by a crisis often feel helpless. Catholic Charities provides accurate and timely information and referrals, and will help advocate for the services required by a family. Catholic Charities crisis experts help individuals and families plan long-term solutions to immediate problems through counseling and financial assistance.

Although nine months have passed since Hurricane Sandy pushed ocean waves down the streets of Staten Island’s Midland Beach, upending cars, flooding homes and destroying nearly everything in its wake, some residents of this seaside community still live in makeshift tents and sheds. Some even sleep on park benches.

Many still need assistance with basic needs such as food and shelter. This includes children, the elderly, and new immigrants. Nine months into this disaster and many believe they have nowhere to turn for help.

A number of local volunteer organizations have been created or expanded to address these needs. “Every night a volunteer goes out in search of those still in need of a meal and a place to sleep,” says Catholic Charities Community Development Coordinator Lourdes Ferrer.

Over three hundred Sandy survivors already receive support from Catholic Charities disaster case managers stationed at Catholic Charities’ office at 120 Anderson Avenue in Staten Island. But rather than just waiting for Sandy survivors to come to Catholic Charities, disaster case managers also go to them.

Catholic Charities manages the New York State Disaster Case Management Program. Designed to streamline support and avoid frustration and confusion, the Disaster Case Management program whittles down the complex system of disaster support by providing survivors with a single point of contact to access a broad range of resources. This allows people still reeling from the loss of jobs and homes to avoid the need to search out multiple organizations that might respond to their various needs. Instead, survivors can relate their experiences and submit their documentation to a single, local disaster case manager who guides them through the recovery process.

Many residents of Staten Island never before had to ask for social service help and were unsure of the value of these services. They initially hoped they could do everything themselves.

So Catholic Charities teamed up with local “hubs,” ad hoc service centers that sprang up in neighborhoods hit hardest by the hurricane to provide food, water, clothing, supplies and services, educate the community and reach more of those in need. Case managers from Catholic Charities now help staff the Staten Island Alliance office on Colony Ave, enrolling many new clients into the program and meeting with existing clients. Case managers are also able to meet with clients in their homes. To extend these services, Catholic Charities disaster case managers are preparing to staff another hub in the New Dorp neighborhood in Staten Island. By meeting staff at home, in local hubs and Catholic Charities offices, hurricane survivors can feel comfortable in familiar surroundings close to home among people they know.

“People think that because so many months have passed, that everything is back to ‘normal’,” Lourdes said. “But the reality is there are communities in Staten Island that are still recovering and struggling to accept the new ‘normal’.”

Fox 5’s”Good Day New York co-anchorGreg Kelly emceed as representatives from Major League Baseball, the New York Rangers and Mayor Bloomberg’s Intergovernmental Affairs office were honored at the 77th Catholic Youth Organization (CYO) Club of Champions Tribute and Dinner last Wednesday, June 26, at The Waldorf=Astoria. Attended by more than 400 people, the event raised more than $600,000 to help fund inner-city community centers, parish-based athletic, cultural, volunteer and scouting programs and other initiatives throughout the Archdiocese of New York.

Timothy J. Brosnan, Executive Vice President, Major League Baseball, received the CYO Club of Champions’ Gold Medal, which is awarded annually to an individual who has provided inspiration and leadership for the youth of New York City. Rod Gilbert, Director, Special Projects, Community Relations Representative of the New York Rangers, received the John V. Mara Sportsman of the Year Award, given to individuals who exhibited exceptional sportsmanship throughout their careers. And Haeda Mihaltses, Director of the Mayor’s Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, received the Terence Cardinal Cooke Humanitarian Award for their outstanding commitment to youth.

“The generosity of our honorees, Tim Brosnan, Haeda Mihaltses and Rod Gilbert and their colleagues and friends is greatly appreciated and critically needed,” Monsignor Sullivan added. “Through CYO, tens of thousands of New York youth of all religions participate in healthy and wholeness sports, cultural and other recreational activities throughout the year.”

All proceeds from the event support CYO programs that serve thousands of children and young people –non-Catholic and Catholic alike– throughout the Archdiocese of New York.

CYO supports the work of hundreds of parishes throughout the Archdiocese of New York to administer organized athletics programs for more than 24,000 children and youth ages 4 to 21 in the Archdiocesan region. Strongly rooted in local communities, CYO programs are organized around parishes with parental participation at the local level. In keeping with our mission, CYO Athletic Programs serve youth without regard to race, ethnicity, gender or religion. Through this broad array of recreational and spiritual growth and development opportunities, CYO promotes lives of promise, accomplishment and hope for young New Yorkers.

Catholic Charities’ Monge Codio — known best, perhaps, for Catholic Charities-sponsored pilgrimages he made to Haiti to help those hurt by the 2010 earthquake disaster and the American Haitians for Economic Advancement & Development program he founded — celebrated his three-year anniversary as Director of Operations for CYO’s Hudson Valley Region during a live broadcast last week on AM1300 WRCR.

He spoke not only about ongoing help for folks still reeling from the Haiti disaster but also about a host of activities and initiatives offered by Catholic Charities CYO.

For example, more than 17,000 youth participate in CYO NY’s basketball program alone.

Yet CYO offers far more than the basketball program for which it is best known, said this former college basketball coach whose resume includes stints coaching at Concordia, Iona and Northeastern University.

CYO serves children from third through eighth grade and offers, for example, art and essay contests, scouting, retreats, track and field contests, soft ball and even a special golf program for children with developmental disabilities.

Thirty-foot-high waves crashed through Evelyn’s street “so high, so fast that if we’d stayed another minute we would have been trapped inside,” she said, still breathing fast four months later as she related the event.

Never had Evelyn imagined seeing the ocean out the windows of her Seavers Avenue home, she said. After all, the two-story semi attached brick and shingled house she shared with her sons, Christopher, 14, and Nicholas, 18, was surrounded by fellow semi-attached homes that stretched more than a mile to the nearest beach.

But on the evening of October 29, Hurricane Sandy whipped the mighty Atlantic as it commandeered Staten Island roads, washed away homes, trucks and businesses and destroyed nearly everything Evelyn and her family owned.

“People think it’s over,” she said, recalling that night and all the tough days that have come since then. “It’s nowhere near over.”

She, her sons, and their two dogs, Pluto and Poppy, fought their way through the waves. They dove into their 2000 Ford Explorer. And they escaped, literally, with nothing more than the clothes on their back. Salt water, dead fish and debris filled the basement and first floor of their former home.

If it were not for help from volunteers who drove nearly 1,000 miles from Tennessee to lend a hand coupled with donations from St. Margaret Mary Church and Catholic Charities, she could never have rebuilt her home, she said.

Fortunately, St. Margaret Mary Church in Staten Island gave her sheet rock, insulation, doors, compound, nails, and tape. They also gave her a $500 gift card to Home Depot from Catholic Charities.

“I now had everything needed to set me up,” she said.

But it was only a start.

This single mom had no money to pay for the rehab. When she returned to work a week after the storm, her employer, an insurance billing company, told her not to come back, she said. She could not qualify for unemployment benefits, she added, because the company denied firing her, telling the New York State Unemployment Office that they instead told her to “take all the time she needs to recover.” Meanwhile, her flood and homeowners insurance still have not processed her claims.

So, while she and her sons squeezed into a one-bedroom apartment paid for, temporarily, by FEMA, she went online seeking help. On a Facebook site set up for Sandy Survivors she came across five men from Tennessee. They were looking, they wrote, for a dry place to stay in Staten Island so they could volunteer their rehab skills. Although the basement and first floor of her Seavers Avenue home had been destroyed, the second floor was dry, she wrote back, and they were welcome to it.

When the Tennessee volunteers arrived – “three guys in their 40s and two guys old enough to be my father” – they discovered that she was one of the only neighbors to have the rehab materials they needed to get to work. So they chose her home.

For more than a week they worked 12-hour days, tearing out sodden insulation and sheet rock and mucking out flooring. Then they rebuilt the walls and floors using the brand new building supplies that St. Margaret Mary Church and Catholic Charities had given her.

Her story, however, is far from finished.

“People are scavenging for building materials, people who have it much worse than me,” she said. “It’s a community; it’s not just me.”